Everyday, thousands of cargo containers arrive at various destinations around the world, be it at airports, train stations, ports, buildings and other public or private venues. The containers are used to carry a broad range of items including, but not limited to, vehicles, food, livestock and clothing.
The global economy necessitates that cargo containers for import and export trade be moved in a manner that assures a nation's citizens and the foreign trading and business community that the risk experienced will be at acceptable and predictable levels. As such assuring a safe and efficient flow of cargo containers is critical to a vibrant global economy.
The basic tool today for monitoring cargo containers is the manifest. Typically, the cargo manifest describes, amongst other things, the objects expected to be present in the cargo container. The cargo manifest is the basis of commercial agreements, e.g., assuring that what is shipped is what ultimately arrives at its destination. The cargo manifest is typically also the basis of monitoring hazardous cargo stowage, proper freight rate assessments and assessing customs duties. The United States government has recently implemented a program called CSI (Container Security Initiative) which makes use of the manifest of selected containers at foreign ports before these ones are shipped to the U.S.
A first deficiency associated with the use of a cargo manifest alone for assessing the content of a cargo container is the possibility of cargo theft. Cargo theft is the removal of one or more items from the cargo container after the manifest has been created. As such, the content of the cargo container at the departure location is different from the content of the cargo container at the arrival location. A method typically used for remedying this deficiency is to close the cargo container with a seal or with “smart” door sensors. “Smart” door sensors are typically adapted to detect changes in light intensity or other changes in the internal environment of the container. It follows therefore, in theory, that if the seal of a cargo container is not broken or if no change in light intensity or in the internal environment of the container was detected, the content of that cargo container should match the expected content of the cargo container as it is expressed in the manifest.
A second deficiency associated with the use of a cargo manifest is the possibility of manifest fraud. Manifest fraud includes the introduction of illicit cargo (arms, drugs, people, counterfeit objects) in a cargo container after the manifest has been created or the omission from the manifest of already present cargo. As such, the actual content of the container at the departure location is different from that expressed in the manifest. As can be readily appreciated, the above-described deficiency is not corrected by applying a seal to the cargo container or by the use of “smart” door sensors.
The use of a cargo manifest in a non-complex environment in which there is no possibility of fraud or deceitful actions may be adequate, but in complex environments, its use becomes increasingly inadequate and insecure. As such, even if a cargo container is associated to a manifest and is sealed, its actual content may be different from that expressed by the manifest. For that reason, verification of the content of a cargo container is required to ensure that the contents correspond to the manifest.
In practice, such verification is performed manually by having a customs agent, or a port official, break the seal of the cargo container and make a visual inspection of its content on the basis of the manifest. As can be readily appreciated, such a procedure is time consuming and costly both from a human resource perspective (since customs or security agents must be hired to perform this inspection) as well as from an economic perspective, since the cargo containers are delayed in transit waiting to be screened. For that reason, not all cargo containers are screened but rather a small percentage of the containers (about 4% in 2005) are screened in the manner described above. The manner in which cargo containers are selected for screening varies from random selection to selections based on risk factors (origin, type of shipment, destination, etc. . . . ). However, a large number of cargo containers go unscreened leaving a loophole available for smuggling (of drugs, arms and people), manifest fraud and other unlawful activities. As terrorism and smuggling increase, the potential problems that such a loophole allows are significant not only from an economic standpoint but also from a national security perspective.
A proposed solution to the above is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,370,222, issued Apr. 9, 2002 to Cornick, Jr. and assigned to CCVS, LLC, Annandale Va. (US). The contents of the above noted patent are incorporated herein by reference. More specifically, U.S. Pat. No. 6,370,222 describes a method and system for verifying the contents of a cargo container which includes acquiring at the departure port at least one image of the cargo container and of the contents of the cargo container and storing the image with a manifest associated with the cargo container. The manifest is sent to another location, say to the arrival port, and, at the other location, selectively, a second image of the contents of the cargo container is acquired and compared with the original image stored with the manifest associated with the cargo container.
A deficiency with the above described solution is that it requires obtaining two (2) images of the cargo container—one at the departure port and one at the arrival port. As such, the above-described system requires that both the departure and arrival locations be equipped with similar equipment and imaging capabilities. Since the departure and arrival locations may be located in different countries, providing this type of coordination may be prohibitively complex and is impractical. Another deficiency associated to the above-described method is that it generally requires a human operator to effect a comparison between the images and the manifest which is time consuming and costly.
Consequently, there is a need in the industry for providing a method and system for use in screening cargo containers to verify the contents thereof that alleviate at least in part the deficiencies of the prior art.